For twenty years, Micah has fed them this lie like a bowl of ice cream, scooping it up and shoving it down their throats often enough, and with enough passion that they believed it. He fooled his so-called best friends with this stitched-together story and held Jax’s sanity hostage. He let Jax believe that it was his fault, his crime, when all this time, it was Micah’s.

My gaze flits to Jax—to poor, batty Jax, and it’s hard to see his face in the dark, but I see his stance. The way his arms swing up once again, the way he aims the rifle at Micah’s chest. I don’t need to see his expression to know what happens next.

“Charlie, move,” Chet hollers, but he doesn’t have to tell me. I’m already scuttling farther up the dock, putting some space between Jax and his target, moving all the way to the edge. I don’t know how accurate a shot Jax is. Don’t want to be in range when he pulls that trigger.

Micah puffs up his chest, spreading his arms wide. “Do it. Go on—shoot me.”

Cars screech around a curve in Micah’s driveway, and I shudder at what Sam will think when he comes around the side of the house. Jax will look like the aggressor. Paul must be thinking the same thing, because he yells at Jax to put down the gun.

Micah sputters, pounding a fist on his chest. “Right here. Somebody shoot me, damn it. Do it.”

There’s commotion high on the hill, bodies spilling down it like an army of ants, voices shouting to get down, to put the guns down. Jax freezes, everything but his expression. He’s close enough I see it now. Not the anger I expected to see but a smile—a real, actual smile. Slowly, smoothly, he lays the rifle on the grass.

Revenge comes in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes the best revenge, the worst kind, is to do nothing at all.

I see it too late, the way it creeps over Micah’s features—the hardness, that look of determined exhilaration. Daring death. Doing something crazy.

His body shifts, and three things happen all at once.

Jax lunges.

I scream.

Micah pulls the trigger.

36

A gunshot on the lake sounds like the sky is cracking open, shattering your eardrums and swallowing up every other sound, ripping through your bones like a bullet.

Only it wasn’t my bone the bullet ripped through. It was Micah’s, and by his own hand.